Brand awareness marketing tips from an expert
As Head of Growth at WebSavvy, brand marketing expert Trevor Henselwood has helped hundreds of eCommerce brands grow from strength to strength with smart brand awareness strategies. His marketing successes include some of the nation’s best-loved businesses, such as Showpo, Frank Green and Adore Beauty, just to name a few.
Trevor is passionate about brand awareness and helping businesses develop messaging to connect with customers. And he first wants business owners to know that brand awareness marketing is a very different ballgame to product and sales marketing.
“Awareness marketing has always been extremely difficult to measure, and there’s a different benchmark for brand awareness than for sales,” he told editor Cec Busby on the Flying Solo podcast.
“The biggest mistake people make is they measure their awareness marketing budget against revenue. But that’s too simple. In 2023, you need a portion of your budget to go specifically towards brand awareness. It doesn’t have to be massive – 10 or 20 per cent is pretty good.”
Trevor suggests looking to a different set of metrics when measuring the success of your brand awareness marketing.
“A lot of people start to build awareness with social channels like Meta and YouTube, but then a week later they’ll look at the return on investment of their campaign, and they’ll say, ‘this isn’t working’, and immediately turn it off. So again, however, it comes back to measurement – how do you measure ROI, and how do you budget for it? Do you expect it to produce sales right away? Are you measuring it from revenue or something else?
“I encourage people to set their core KPI for Reach or CPM (cost per mille, or cost for 1,000 impressions/views of the campaign) and then measure and benchmark that. If you’re measuring it for what it’s supposed to do, then you’ll find success and stay with it. But if you’re measuring your awareness campaigns on sales or revenue performance, it’s like asking your cat to bark. You’ll always be disappointed.”
Choosing the right marketing channels
Trevor says diversifying marketing channels is crucial in creating a solid brand awareness campaign. However, he cautions businesses to choose their audiences and core messaging wisely.
“Pick the channel where your audience is naturally, and then move out from there,” he advises. “Where does your market hang out?”
“When you start diversifying your channels, there is some risk that your message gets watered down because you’re trying to optimise for however that placement is going to look. You really want the core message to be the same across all brand awareness channels. The format could be different and might not be exactly the same content, but if that core campaign message is there, then that will have salience because people see that in multiple places and remember it.”
Trevor also encourages businesses to remember that brand awareness is not just for attracting new customers; it’s also about keeping your business top of mind for past and current customers.
“One of the ‘aha’ moments we’ve had is that it’s so tempting to aim for new business for your awareness campaigns. However, I encourage businesses to consider that everybody on your lists, whether a marketing list or an email list, needs to be reminded of your brand as well.
“You can split up those two pieces to have the bulk of your investment aimed towards new people, but don’t forget to remind your past customers about your brand.”
Listen to Trevor Henselwood on the Flying Solo podcast:
What makes a good brand message?
“That’s the billion-dollar question,” Trevor laughs. “A good brand message defines the brand’s essence; it’s your elevator pitch. So, what do you tell people in a quick situation to describe what your brand’s about?”
“And I think you have to test that sometimes,” he says. “When you’re working on a brand, you get so deep in it; you forget what it looks like to somebody on the outside. So, make sure you’ve got your elevator pitch, but then find out what other people think about it and how that stacks up to your assessment. Then it’s about putting that core brand highlight into your ads.”
Trevor advises businesses to ensure that their messaging is consistent across every platform, particularly your website.
“When you’re doing an awareness strategy, you must make sure that your website also has that same message. Many of our clients often forget that people are coming to the website for the first time, so they need to know they’re in the right spot.
“If I go to a site where I can’t tell what it’s about, I’ll quickly leave because I don’t like thinking that much,” Trevor cautions. “As a consumer, we see a cool ad, get to the site, and then get lost. Once somebody’s become frustrated with your website, they remember their frustration and associate it with your brand. And that’s the last thing you want.
“Your website homepage is the introduction to the brand. What problem do you solve? What are the features, advantages and benefits of the brand? How do you show that simply and succinctly? That greases the wheels a little bit for a lot of people.
“It’s a bit of an art and quite challenging, but I think it’s worth investing in because if you get that right, everything else will perform better.”
Marketing tips for newbies
If you’re a new business keen to make people aware of your products or services, Trevor believes in working on your service fulfilment first and marketing second.
“If you’re just getting started, I wouldn’t start with ads; work on the performance first,” he advises. “Don’t go right into awareness because then you’ve got no way to capture it.
“Before you throw money at your business, make sure that your fulfilment is great and that people like your product and word of mouth is picking up. You’ve irritated all your friends, you’ve got a few people to come and buy, and they’re happy. That’s the first step before running ads. Once you’ve got those processes going, it’s time to start building your brand foundation.
“Then, setting up your remarketing audiences using your brand name and Google ads are the next big pieces. Make sure you’re advertising to those past customers and understanding how big those audiences are so that when you check in and see them grow, you know that something’s working.”
Trevor shared many more tips for building brand awareness with advertising in this advice-packed episode of Flying Solo. Listen to the entire ep now.
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